Is there a way to determine if a user is signed into Github copilot?

[jleong-stripe]

I'm developing an extension and need to implement logic that branches based on whether the user has GitHub Copilot installed AND is authenticated with their GitHub account (so that they can actually use Copilot).

I've tried checking if the Copilot extension is active like this:

const copilotExtension = extensions.getExtension('GitHub.copilot-chat');
const isCopilotActive = copilotExtension?.isActive;

But that only tells me if the extension is activated, which could be true even if the user isn't authenticated. Is there a more reliable method to ascertain the user's authentication status with GitHub Copilot specifically?

[matv-stripe]

cc @isidorn

[isidorn]

Not sure if we have some context keys for this that you could look at for your extension
@bpasero might know.

[bpasero]

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/df54f43ef658133ff2e5886428b29bee07f693e7/src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/common/chatContextKeys.ts#L60-L61

[jleong-stripe]

Thanks both. Is there a way to fetch these context keys programatically? I noticed there isn't a getContext() API.

[matv-stripe]

Something like this seems to work for us since we cannot get that key programmatically:

/**
 * This is sort of a hacky way to tell if the user is signed into Copilot.
 * This check only works if the user has the Copilot extension chat view open already.
 * We have also considered using the "chatIsEnabled" context key, but there is no way
 * to programmatically access that.
 */
export const isUserSignedToCopilot = async () => {
  const models = await vscode.lm.selectChatModels({
    vendor: 'copilot',
  });
  return models.length > 0;
};

[isidorn]

Nice workaround :)

[matv-stripe]

@isidorn @roblourens , we have noticed that this does not work anymore

/**
 * This is sort of a hacky way to tell if the user is signed into Copilot.
 * This check only works if the user has the Copilot extension chat view open already.
 * We have also considered using the "chatIsEnabled" context key, but there is no way
 * to programmatically access that.
 */
export const isUserSignedToCopilot = async () => {
  const models = await vscode.lm.selectChatModels({
    vendor: 'copilot',
  });
  return models.length > 0;
};

is there any way to programmatically determine if the user is signed into copilot?

[isidorn]

Since you say it no longer works - what models do you get if the user is not signed into copilot?

[jleong-stripe]

For context, we are trying to implement deep linking into VS Code, where our user clicks a button on the webpage and it launches VS Code and our extension. In this scenario, it seems like when VS Code/Copilot is starting up, await vscode.lm.selectChatModels can sometimes still return 0 models even though the user is signed in. If we call it again once Copilot is fully loaded, then it will return all the models.

The other issue we seem to be running into is when deep linking, we also execute the workbench command workbench.action.chat.open with a non-partial query. This works fine if VS Code was already open on the user's machine and Copilot was fully initialized, but if that's not the case and we launch the app then we will see a Language Model Unavailable error.

Can we await on something to ensure Copilot is fully loaded before invoking the chat command?

[jleong-stripe]

@isidorn Following up to see if there are any solutions we can try

[isidorn]

Hands down on MS build conference - will be able to reply after next week.